“You’ve hit me right where I live, Miss Sullivan.”
The collies came warily up, stiff-legged, with backs still ruffled, and sniffed Mackenzie over. They seemed to find him harmless, turning from him presently to go and lie beside Charley, their faces toward the flock, alert ears lifted, white breasts gleaming in the sun like the linen of fastidious gentlemen.
“Do you want me to get any water, Joan?” Charley inquired.
Joan answered from inside the wagon that no water was needed, there was coffee enough in the pot. She handed the smoke-blackened vessel out to Mackenzie as she spoke, telling him to go and put it on the fire.
Joan turned the beans into the pan after cooking the bacon, and sent Charley to the wagon for a loaf of bread.
“We don’t have to bake bread in this camp, that’s one blessing,” she said. “Mother keeps us supplied. Some of these sheepherders never taste anything but their cold-water biscuits for years at a time.”
“It must get kind of tiresome,” Mackenzie reflected, thinking of his own efforts at bread-making on the road.
“It’s too heavy to carry around in the craw,” said Joan.
Charley watched Mackenzie curiously as he ate, whispering once to his sister, who flushed, turned her eyes a moment on her visitor, and then seemed to rebuke the lad for passing confidences in such impolite way. Mackenzie guessed that his discolored neck and bruised face had been the subject of the boy’s conjectures, but he did not feel pride enough in his late encounter to speak of it even in explanation. Charley opened the way to it at last when Joan took the breakfast things back to the wagon.